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The Sundance Question: “How Did Events of 2020 Change Your Film?”

Park City's main street with a snow-covered mountain looming in the background, the Egyptian Theater in clear view.Photo: Kelsey Doyle, courtesy Sundance Institute.

by
in Festivals & Events, Sundance, Sundance Responses
on Jan 28, 2021

Each year Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see past years’ questions and responses, click here.)

This year’s question:

 “How did events of 2020 — any of them — change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it?

“The Scope of the Story Also Expanded”: Director Nanfu Wang | In the Same Breath

“I Feel Like in 2020 I Was Lucky”: Director Miriam Guttmann | Seeds of Deceit

“Whether It’s a Refugee Crisis or a Pandemic, We Are All in This Together”: Director Jonah Poher Rasmussen | Flee

“I Became More Interested Than Ever in Trying to Understand My Daughter’s Story”: Director Peter Nicks | Homeroom

“Art Is Never Finished, Only Abandoned”: Director Mariem Pérez Riera | Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided Go For It

“It Was as if the Film Had Given Us Permission to Connect”: Director Christopher Makoto Yogi | I Was a Simple Man

“It’s Reflecting the Times but Arriving Warped”: Director Dash Shaw | Cryptozoo

“People Will Watch Films Differently Today Than They Did a Year Ago”: Director Ronny Trocker | Human Factors

“The Natural World and Our Interconnectedness”: Director Sally Aitken | Playing With Sharks

“Strange to Accomplish Your Dreams in Such Times”: Director Pascual Sisto | John and the Hole

“The Uncanny Similarities of a Town Dealing with a Fast-Spreading Curse”: Director Sean Ellis | Eight for Silver

“I Usually Avoid Celebrating Birthdays, But it Felt Important to Embrace This One”: Director Pacho Velez | Searchers

“My Film Family Was Atomized”: Director Jamila Wignot | Ailey

“The Most Cruel Form of Social Distancing”: Directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh | Writing With Fire

“We Had Found Ourselves in the Fairytale”: Director Salomé Jashi | Taming the Garden

“A Continuing Lesson to Be Patient with Myself”: Director Kate Tsang | Marvelous and the Black Hole

“Everyone Started Living a Kind of Extended Groundhog Day”: Director Nicole Beckwith | Together Together

“Technology Hasn’t Taken Away the Longing to Hug”: Director Natalia Almada | Users

“Last Year Made Me Want to Find Other Ways of Processing Their Meaning”: Director Theo Anthony | All Light Everywhere

“Firework Explosions Went Off During So Many Sleepless Nights Just as They Do in Our Film”: Director Karen Cinorre | Mayday

“Fatal Violence Against Black Americans Made Pauli’s Story Relevant in Ways We Wish it Weren’t”: Directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen | My Name is Pauli Murray

“I Promised I Wouldn’t Cut My Hair”: Director Amalia Ulman | El Planeta

“The Studios Where We Edited Had to Close All of a Sudden”: Director Blerta Basholli | Hive

“Without Realizing it, I Made a Movie That Obeyed the Rules of Social Distancing”: Director Jane Schoenbrun | We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

“I Drove Out to Texas Alone and Slept in My Car on the Way”: Director Manuel Crosby | First Date

“The Longer Schedule Forced Us to Think More Deeply”: Directors Madeleine Sims-Flower and Dusty Mancinelli | Violation

“The Pandemic Meant There was Nothing to Do All Summer Except Sit at Home and Edit”: Directors Parker Hill & Isabel Bethancourt | Cusp

“America’s Most Incarcerated City”: Directors Ted Passon, Yoni Brook and Nicole Salazar | Philly D.A.

“Passion Projects That Are Suffering”: Director Mona Fastvold | The World to Come

 

 

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